


coming up roses

by fondleeds



Category: Harry Styles (Musician)
Genre: 1990s, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Explicit Language, Friends to Lovers, Guitars, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:02:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29542773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: Mitch has never been a believer in that pin-drop saying. There’s always something else going on, especially in bars, especially in bars at two in the morning after the crowd has just witnessed a painfully mawkish Cyndi Lauper cover. Even the most focused of people will breathe out a sigh and disrupt the air.Then Harry starts to play. Knees tucked close, bottom lip bitten between teeth, ringed hands melting into his strings.And, yeah. Mitch holds his breath, along with every other person and possible noise-making object in the room. Not a sound.If only he had a pin, just to test the theory.-AU. Mitch, Harry, and Portland in the 90s.
Relationships: Mitch Rowland/Harry Styles
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	coming up roses

**Author's Note:**

> delving into hitch w an idea i've had banging around in my brain for a while. this stems from my deep love of elliott smith and my love of other 90s related things. enjoy!

The first time Mitch sees Harry, he won’t realize until later on in the night that this isn’t the first time he’s seen him around before.

Friday’s at LaLuna usually pull a decent crowd, but for a group of relative unknowns wielding shiny acoustics instead of half-smashed Les Pauls and lawsuit-Japanese copies, the head count Mitch gathers side-stage is closer to fifteen. There’s five of them on the bill, a small group booked in for a few shows over the coming weeks, and Mitch has dragged himself from the depths of his reluctance and his bedroom to share this stage in the hope that fifteen patrons may double into thirty the next time around, and thirty into sixty, and sixty into a hundred-and-twenty, by which point there’s a chance he’ll be able to stomach sitting under a spotlight in front of that many people.

It’s all well and good when he’s playing bass and hiding behind unwashed hair and the sardine crowd is focused on bouncing all over the place like meaty ping-pong balls. The lights are always dark, always glowing red.

Tonight, there is a chair centre stage, a microphone stand that keeps drooping, and a spotlight.

Mitch plays, and shakes through it.

After, nursing a Johnnie Walker at the bar, he watches the two acts that follow him. Adam, who he knows well from the scene, plays more covers than originals and is here for their two complimentary drinks and the release it gives him from being in a band in which his ex-girlfriend is the lead singer and keeps writing hilariously defaming songs about him. His cover of _Time after Time_ is certainly a sight to behold.

Harry’s last on the bill, cradling a small black acoustic that’s been beaten within an inch of its life. In dark jeans and a dark sweater he fumbles around the stage, fumbles to sit, and adjusts the stubborn microphone three times before he deems it worthy of accepting whatever will come out of his mouth.

Their measly sardine pool quivers. It’s almost two in the morning and they’re eager to swim on home.

“Evening,” Harry says, downtuning his E string, the swoop of it following the dip of his voice. “I’ve got some…songs.”

Mitch has never been a believer in that pin-drop saying. There’s always something else going on, especially in bars, especially in bars at two in the morning after the crowd has just witnessed a painfully mawkish Cyndi Lauper cover. Even the most focused of people will breathe out a sigh and disrupt the air.

Then Harry starts to play. Knees tucked close, bottom lip bitten between teeth, ringed hands melting into his strings.

And, yeah. Mitch holds his breath, along with every other person and possible noise-making object in the room. Not a sound.

If only he had a pin, just to test the theory.

-

Mitch asks around at work and the usual spots after his quiet curiosity decides to start banging pots and pans in the days that follow their first performance. _Harry Styles._ Some people know the name, but everyone knows his band. It takes one mention of Cruel Reminder and their infamous show at Satyricon to get Mitch’s memory running on the treadmill of gigs he’s seen and played over the years.

That was back when he was still playing bass with Memory Lane and occasionally offering himself up as an over glorified guitar-tech for other bands on the same bill who could afford to pay him on the side. They were a lost cause from the start, with a singer who had a great voice but a shitty attitude, and a guitarist that insisted the drummer was always out of time and often would stop playing mid-set until they declared the tempo correct. Weird group of dudes. Mitch had fun with it at the time.

Harry is familiar because they played on some of the same stages together and he’s been running in the Portland scene far longer than Mitch has. Or was, until about a year ago, which is around the time Cruel Reminder got kicked out of Satyricon. Mitch hardly recognized him because the Harry he remembers was the frontman of a semi-well known up-and-coming monster of a band. Unrestrained, screaming his head off into the microphone, throwing himself around. And, on that fateful Friday night, smashing a near-full glass of dark rum on stage and trashing a bunch of gear.

They got kicked out and blacklisted from a lot of clubs after that. The bar staff crawled around the sticky stage like ants looking for sugar in an effort to clean up the mess and the two bands left to play had to be restrained from following after Harry and the rest of the group once the centre foldbacks were deemed unsalvageable. Patrons left in waves and the night was a complete bust: for all the bands on the bill, Satyricon’s business, and Cruel Reminders reputation.

“Think he ran off,” Sunny says, while Mitch is buying a zine and cigarettes over the river. Sunny knows everybody’s business because everybody tells him about their business. This is the place to go for the who’s who. He’s got one of those trustworthy faces and an avuncular spirit that immediately envelopes any kid he serves. And everyone Sunny serves is a kid in his eyes. “Chicago, or somethin’. Real shame. Sweet kid. Lots of drugs is the speculation. But I heard you played with him at Luna, right? He’s back in town?”

Nothing gets past Sunny.

Mitch glances at him fleetingly. “That’s right.”

“I heard he’s good.”

“Yeah,” Mitch says. Good is not even close to covering it. “He was pretty good.”

-

Two weeks and two shows later, Mitch wanders over with his hard-case held in a vice grip at his front. He can’t discern whether this is a move of courage or cowardice, but putting a sturdy object between himself and Harry seems like the best move he can make here. Harry is tucking his own guitar away in a soft-case that’s genuinely coming apart at the seams, a big hole ripped right up the neck.

They had a decent crowd tonight. Stuffy for a late-late gig.

“Hey,” Mitch says. “Great show.”

Harry startles and whips his head around. After realizing he’s likely just an abyss greeting a near-stranger Mitch shuffles closer, painfully awkward.

“You too,” Harry says. He zips up his case swiftly and throws on a hoodie. Fusses with the collar, hair askew, and ties the drawstrings into a bow as he continues speaking. “I’ve been meaning to say hello to you. Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Mitch is stuck hop-footing between intimidation and admiration and fascination. “I guess I just wanted to say, like. Thanks for joining the bill. You’re really pulling in the numbers for us little guys.”

Harry’s smile is slow and unsure, eyes flicking left, up, down at his shoes. “I doubt that. Everyone is great. And you, with that Dove. It’s a sight.”

Mitch’s fingers curl tighter around the handle involuntarily. “I feel like a bit of a poser, actually.”

“Nah.” Harry laughs and throws his hood up, case in hand, body bound like he’s ready to leave. “You might just be the best of us. Dove or no Dove.”

“Now _that,_ I doubt,” Mitch says.

Harry sways for a moment, rocking on the balls of his feet in consideration. “Do you want to get a drink or something? I’m kind of wired.”

Mitch had only come over to say hello, and even then he’s usually not so brazen. In the track record of his laconic life he’s _never_ the first one to say anything, especially not to people like Harry. The more mystified Mitch is, the more often he shies away. He’s never felt that mystic quality in himself.

But then Harry, unabashed and quiet all at once, says, “You’re the first person that’s spoken to me all night.”

With his hood up his face is pale and moon-shaped and slightly unreal.

Mitch flips a coin in his mind and sees the other side, and thinks of magnets pushing away from each other, avoiding and manipulating gravitational force, and of dropping pins. Even when Harry isn’t playing, it seems everyone has been too afraid to approach him lest they break the silent spell they’ve cast. Mitch didn’t realize, until this moment, that he’s been waving his own metaphorical wand.

“Sure,” he says. It’s three in the morning. He’ll be in a construction zone at six-fifteen, but if he leaves now he knows he’ll regret it. “Let’s go for a drink.”

-

They play at LaLuna again on the last show for their bill of mismatched dudes with long hair and sad songs and enough charm between them to create adequate momentum for a good time. When this all began, there were fifteen kids staring back at them. Tonight, the room is full. Bursting. Nobody has commented on the fact that the bill poster now reads _HARRY STYLES with special guests,_ all their names listed beneath.

Mitch doesn’t question it. It would be stupid to question it.

He’s never played to this many people without being in a band, without warped distortion and ear-shattering caveman cymbal bashing and that one dude at the front who screams the lyrics wrong no matter who’s on the stage. It’s relatively quiet, a few murmurs, the on-off gush of liquid from behind the bar. But for the most part the crowd listens and laughs at his nervousness and his attempt at telling the one joke he manages to conjure after he’s been on stage for twenty-five minutes, finally warmed up to the amount of people staring at him and ready to play his last song.

Harry’s waiting to go on, after. He shoots Mitch a smile. Already the crowd is restless, hoping to catch a glimpse of the kid they’ve been hearing about in the zines and on the local station. Harry from Cruel Reminder back again, with those songs and those chords and that voice.

The atmosphere resembles space, if space allowed only one source of sound amongst it’s burning stars and blackholes and vacuum sealed commitment to silence. And that source is Harry. Playing to a little cosmos, to the ever-growing galaxy that holds Portland. Hundreds of blinking stars staring up onto that stage in wonder, trying to understand. The applause between each song is a rocket launch.

Mitch doesn't have much lined up after this. A few gigs here again, the hope of playing at a record store over the river. It’s hard to play there without an actual record, which he does not have, but would if he had the money to record it, or a contract to a label. Maybe there’ll be someone waiting for him in the wings tonight.

The point is, this is the last show for their bill, which means it’s probably the last time he and Harry will share a stage for a while. And for whatever reason, Mitch isn’t quite ready to let that magic go.

They stick around to help pack up. The other guys go off in their group of three, coiling cables over their elbows like assholes and talking shit. Mitch loses sight of Harry for a while but spots him later, behind the bar of all places, stacking glasses neatly and asking the bartender where she got her shirt from, and if she’d like to hang out sometime.

They finally convene, accidentally, outside. Mitch turns the corner and nearly smacks Harry in the shins with his guitar case.

“Shit.” He swings it out of the way just in time. “You scared me.”

Harry, leant against the grimy brick with a lit cigarette between his pouty mouth, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie, lifts a brow. “I’m just standing here, man.”

“I know,” Mitch says, and attempts to tuck his jacket around himself with one hand. This late in the summer the heat from the day doesn’t stick around long. Harry’s got the right idea. “Mind if I join?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Got any plans, now?” Mitch asks after a few minutes of silence. The street is mostly empty. Shadowed figures make their presence known only by the puffs of smoke they trail from open doorways, moon hung high. It’s a clear night. “For shows, I mean.”

Harry shrugs and taps the ash on his cigarette. His exhale is a long grey stream. “A few things. I’ve had some offers to do a small circuit. Seattle and Olympia and back, mixing with bands. That all seems like a bit much, though.”

“Does it?” Mitch asks.

“Well, yeah,” Harry says. “Barely even got a record done. Seems a bit presumptuous to sign onto something like that so quick. Seems like selling out before I’ve even really sold.”

“What about your band?”

“Meaning…”

“Uh.” Mitch sucks on his cigarette, hoping that wasn’t too much of a misfire. “Like, you guys were pretty successful. Slim signed you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “He did. And it fucked everything up. We weren’t ready and I wasn’t a very good leader.”

“You still play together?”

“Sometimes.” Harry waves his hand. “Don’t think we’ll play live again, though. I’m trying something new.”

“Well,” Mitch says promptly. “Looks like it’s working wonders.”

Harry laughs under his breath. “Looks like it.”

They fall silent. Harry scuffs his shoe against the sidewalk and Mitch fumbles through the overgrown mess of his thoughts for another question that will stop him leaving so soon. When they went for a drink they didn’t really _talk._ Harry ordered a soda and any time they started tepid conversation someone would come over to say hello to him and tell them they’d seen him play.

“I saw you talking to the bartender,” Mitch says, an attempt at chumminess. He’s never able to make friends that stick despite how long he’s lived here. If he keeps the conversation rolling maybe the two of them will land somewhere in the ballpark eventually. “Get her number?”

Harry smiles like he’s in on a joke, looking down at his dwindling cigarette. “I was just trying to make friends, like you.”

Fuck. Okay. Mitch is way more transparent than he thought. “You caught me.”

They both throw their buds onto the sidewalk at the same time, a moment of accidental synchronization, and glance at each other.

“Thanks for hanging out,” Mitch says, desperate to salvage some part of this conversation even if it means bringing it to an end. “I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah. Maybe we can jam sometime,” Harry says. “Although, that might just be an excuse for me to get my hands on your Dove.”

The way he says it, the little smile and the look in his eyes, stunts Mitch from answering. Suddenly it’s like they’re having two different conversations. Like Harry still hasn’t let him in on the joke from moments earlier.

Mitch, however tentative he is to get it, wants the punchline. “I can arrange that.”

“How about now?” Harry plucks his case from its resting place on the wall, suddenly brightening. “You busy?”

It’s ridiculously late, so no, Mitch is not busy. He _is_ shaky and tired from having all the adrenaline drained from his body, and he needs sleep. But…

“I live close by,” Harry tacks on.

“Cool,” Mitch says, which isn’t really _yes,_ but in the realm of being close enough.

“Come on.” Harry pushes off the wall and grabs Mitch’s arm fleetingly, swinging him round. “If you’re lucky, you can play my Domino.”

-

Close by turns out to be a twenty minute walk. Mitch lives closer. The two of them huddle into their clothes against the nippy air, guitar cases bumping. The Dove isn’t exactly a dumbbell but the hard case Mitch keeps it locked away in to avoid potential dings and scrapes certainly is. Probably not the ideal guitar to be strolling through Buckman with at three in the morning. If his dad was still around, he would fucking kill Mitch if anything happened to it.

Finally, they make it to Harry’s place which he explains is actually his cousin's place, a frail looking house with frail looking trees on guard out front. Harry puts a finger to his lips and unlocks the door with a creak.

The hall has that old wood floor that’s always greyed out and dusty-looking, like the varnish has been pulled up from many years of working feet stomping over it. Harry’s room is behind the last door on the right. A room that is actually a study.

 _No shit_ , Mitch thinks the second he’s inside.

It’s clear that Harry is crashing here on a temporary stay. One he’s likely outlasting his welcome on.

A desk is shoved in the corner, completely covered in shit. The floor, too, is a post-tornado mess. Paper and dishes and books and headphones and a small tape recorder. Empty cassettes and mismatched shoes and two garbage bags worth of clothes spilling their guts from twin tears in their middles. A single bed with a wire frame. Sheets unmade. Hoodies and jackets hanging over the end. On the bedside table: an ashtray, stacked on a journal, stacked on a very unsteady pile of zines.

The window is tiny but placed in the exact path of a streetlamp. There’s no room for nighttime, only icy-blue. A thin glacial lake spilling into this otherwise cavernous abode.

Harry doesn’t turn on the light.

“You can sit,” he says, kicking off his shoes mindlessly and shuffling about, tidying random bits of paper and crap by moving them on top of other bits of crap.

Mitch rests his case on the floor and sinks onto the low mattress, rubbing at his aching shoulder. Never again is he carrying his guitar that far. He’ll spit up the taxi fare.

There are some old tickets stapled to the wall in the space between the window and the end of the bed, a group of pictures gathered there, too, of Tracy, Gwen, Courtney Love, many others cut from newspapers and magazines and collaged into this make-shift shrine. The only picture left in its entirety is a glossy print of Stevie Nicks, pinned in such a way that Mitch imagines there might be a handwritten note hidden on the back, a message from mother to nomadic son, faded well wishes and that special poetry only moms can unintentionally make.

Mitch leans back on his hand to get a closer look and, for reasons unknown, smiles to himself at the picture's wrinkled edges. Endearing. And a little sad.

Harry disappears from the room in search of beer and returns with four, two looped between fingers on each hand, and a pack of smokes between his teeth like a dog playing fetch. He offers Mitch the beers first, then plucks the pack from his mouth and immediately shakes out a cigarette.

“Want one?”

“I’m good.”

Harry nibbles at his bottom lip and fiddles with the pack. After a moment of deliberation he slips the cigarette back in and tosses the carton behind them.

“Alright. Let's see it.”

Mitch is always careful when he undoes the clasps of the case. It’s a habit he’s never kicked, one he’s had since he was a kid. He’s always scared of breaking the sturdiest of things, especially the things that belonged to his dad. Guitars were gold in their house. The finest of china no matter their build.

Harry holds out the Domino, and Mitch holds out the Dove, and they swap with juvenile little smiles.

The first surprise is how light the strings are. Mitch is used to playing heavy and he’s been playing that way for a while now. Another is the thinness and the size of the body in comparison to the Dove. It reminds him, bizarrely, of cradling a newborn. A delicacy he doesn’t quite know what to do with. That he hadn’t expected from the banged up body and the sound Harry gets from it.

He chances a look Harry’s way. It seems he’s getting used to the Dove, too.

They play quietly for a while. Harry is the first to start, so Mitch follows his key once he figures it out, and they putter around each other with the occasional fumble and dissonance. Each time it happens they meet eyes and grin like kids.

The guitar has a black matte finish and the dominos printed around the sound hole and body is no doubt a game to it’s player, tempting Mitch to follow, to push them around and hear that special click of all things settling and sliding into place. Eventually it distracts him, and he follows what he can reach with his finger, unwilling to stick his hands under the strings.

Harry’s playing distracts Mitch next. The bounce of his thumb is steady and even, a bass line all it’s own, while the rest of his fingers spin gold-threads of sound from the fucked up strings Mitch has been meaning to change for ages. He’s got piano hands. Perfect and slim in some places, firm and wide in others. Whenever Mitch wears rings he feels like he’s got chain-link sausages for fingers. Harry’s glint off the light, perfect tetris, not ever getting in the way of his playing.

It’s a lovely melody, dark and sweet, but it slows and falters when Harry finally notices that Mitch has stopped, though he mistakes his trance for dissatisfaction.

“Not a fan?” Harry asks, and asks it wryly. Especially with a vintage Gibson in his hands. “I’ll be offended if you say so.”

“Just getting used to it,” Mitch assures. He strums a quick pattern. “Feels special. Different.”

“It was a gift from a friend in Chicago,” Harry says. “He collects Regals.”

Mitch raises a brow. “Pretty nice gift.”

“You still don’t seem convinced.”

“No, it’s just…” He doesn’t know how to say it; a sudden inadequacy runs through him. To touch this guitar, to witness Harry like this, to be in this crowded room and still sense their mutual trepidation amongst the teasing. “You’re really gentle. I didn’t expect that.”

Harry’s cheeks dimple, a flicker of amusement quickly hidden by his fringe and the way he ducks his head. “You expected something from me, did you?”

Mitch stares hard at the dominos. “Some guys on the scene are assholes,” he says, then apologetically, “Especially the ones who get kicked out of clubs.”

“Ah.” Harry nods to himself. His once teasing smile turns sheepish. Timid. “Yeah. I was in a pretty bad way last year.”

Any lightness between them flattens and thins out significantly. Mitch takes too long to say anything. They both finish their first beers. Harry lights a cigarette and immediately begins tuning the Dove a half-step down, puffing smoke. The bowing notes remind Mitch of a groaning ship. He hates being on the water. He gets fucked up with seasickness.

“How are you this year?” he asks tentatively, once Harry’s finished tuning and is blues-stepping mindlessly all over the frets.

“Alive.” Harry shrugs, pauses, takes the cigarette out of his mouth so he can talk. “Still making things. But, I dunno. It’s all different. I’ve been recording shit on a friends 4-track in their basement and on a tape recorder here. Just demos. Acoustic stuff. Like I did when I was a stupid kid. Something is changing in me. Or I guess I just want things to change…”

Another smart lick, a brush of whinnying chords. Stevie Ray and Bobbie Gentry had a baby and gave that baby a drop-tuned Dove and let it soar.

“Well, the way you played tonight. The way you’ve _been_ playing…” Mitch looks down at his knees. “It’s really, really beautiful.”

“Hm.” Harry frowns. Seems he regrets his decision to down-tune. He holds out the cigarette and Mitch takes it after a moment of hesitation. He shares cigarettes with people all the time, but tucked away in Harry’s bedroom and shrouded in light smoke while the rest of the house sleeps brings forth a peculiar intimacy.

“I don’t know if that’s what I want to be,” Harry says, watching Mitch watch him.

“Beautiful?” Mitch questions.

Harry nods.

“Beauty is a pretty broad spectrum, right? Subjective. Everyone loves to say it’s subjective. Punk is beautiful. Grunge, metal, whatever. So is this.” Mitch gestures vaguely in Harry’s direction, then immediately feels his cheeks heat at what that might imply.

Awkwardly, he holds out the cigarette, needing to tap the ash. Harry grabs for the tray on the bedside, accommodating right away. Mitch sucks in a few shaky puffs and stares at his knees. He expects Harry to start playing again, but he remains still. It was stupid to come here. 

He looks up with the intent of saying goodbye. Harry is nibbling at his top lip.

“What…”

“Nothing,” Harry says. “You make me smile, that’s all. All your little ideas.”

“Condescending, much?”

“No—hey!” Harry grabs Mitch’s wrist to stop him from standing. His hands are alarmingly soft, alarmingly earnest, and warm from playing. “I’m not making fun of you, I swear. We only just met but I feel like I know you somehow. Or you know me.”

Mitch stares, stunned.

“You always know what to say,” Harry goes on. He releases Mitch, pinches the cigarette, leans back bright-eyed in the dark. “And you look good holding my guitar.”

“Right,” Mitch stutters quickly, thankful for the shadows hiding his sure blush. What the hell is happening to him?

Nervous, he fiddles with his hair and wishes he had something to tie it back with. Usually he’s glad that it covers his face, but right now it’s swaddling him. His palms prickle.

“Here.”

Harry holds out a pink tie for him, courtesy of his top drawer. Mitch takes it gratefully and listens to Harry suck down the rest of his beer while he attempts to wrangle his hair into a knot. It’s near impossible with the way his fingers tremble. The balancing act he’s performing with the guitar on his knees doesn’t help.

This feeling…it takes him back to a time when he was still a kid roaming blip Ohio towns, playing a stolen bass through a guitar amp in his cousin's garage. Electricity pushed through a meat grinder and pressed into a terrine mold and distorted in a really shit water-bath. A flubby brick of sound. Harry looks at him and Mitch is that boy again, slapping that rhythm out until his wrist hurts. His heart is a useless and meaty brick, _flub-flub-flub,_ knocking heavily against his ribs.

And tucked amongst the chaos is the exhilaration of making a thing, making a sound, and having it be his.

Portland is asleep. The room is full with smoke and unknown shared memories past. Harry holds the Dove like it’s always belonged to him, smiling at Mitch with a glint in his eye.

**Author's Note:**

> this is standing on it's own for now but i do have plans to add more to it in future (if anybody would like more lol). thought i'd tentatively test the waters and write as i go :) thanks for reading, feel free to comment and tell me your thoughts!!


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